The struggles of Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa

In the April issue of The Africa Report, we investigated how Zimbabwean casual workers, excluded from applying for residency via the official channels, were resorting to ‘purchasing’ South African identities through ‘late registration’ birth certificates arranged through intermediaries. With the moratorium on deportations now over, many Zimbabweans fear being sent back to the economic hardship they fled. We now look deeper into the desperation and dangers faced by these immigrants in their bid to seek work in South Africa.

According to one source, as the majority of Zimbabwean immigrants do not hold official travel documents and cannot use asylum permits, money is placed aside for informal purposes, in other words ‘bribing immigration officials and police on the way’. The source claimed that bribery figures escalate when bus drivers are also go-betweens in the market, charging a fee.

Interviewees claimed they traversed borders either through expensive organised syndicates, or via illegal routes, where robbery and rape was common. ‘On many occasions, even before reaching the border, buses are stopped by the police and everyone is asked to produce a passport. Those who do not have would have to pay the requisite bribes,’ claimed the source.

Of course, while the influx of Zimbabwean migrants hoping to find work as manual labourers and domestic workers has depreciated the cost of labour in South Africa, many of these immigrants are socio-economic refugees, anxious to source income for their family’s basic needs. As a former school teacher stated, ‘By the time I left Zimbabwe, my monthly salary could not buy two litres of cooking oil. I had to leave rather than face the possibility of becoming destitute.’

My source informed me that large numbers of male Zimbabwean immigrants go to major roads and other high-density pick-up points, hoping to be hired as casual workers, rushing to the cars of interested employers that slow down. ‘Who gets hired depends on the kind of work there is. For example, if the work is heavy, those who are stronger stand a better chance,’ he said.

Trusted workers on farms, construction and other projects are often asked to bring their friends to prospective employers. The wage for a single day is estimated at R80-R120 ($12-$18), though targets are sometimes proposed and agreed upon. Other forms of employment include waiting tables in cafes and restaurants, where average pay is R100 per day plus tips from clients. Many of the more educated and well spoken Zimbabweans opt for this type of employment in Durban as well as Cape Town, if they can obtain it. Road hawkers sell pirated CDs. Domestics are most often women, earning between R80 and R130 per day, while males work as cleaners and gardeners for a similar wage. The influx of immigrants, however, means that jobs are hard to come by and wages cannot be negotiated upward.

While many South Africans, particularly those in the low-income groups, expressed sympathy to me about the predicament of Zimbabweans and the pogroms that infamously symbolise xenophobia against the makwerekwere (used by interviewees to describe foreigners in a derogatory sense), xenophobia and racism is nevertheless frequently expressed: ‘See that one,’ I was informed by one vendor pointing at a DRC car guard, ‘he is no better than a monkey, an animal.’ However, set against the backdrop of South Africa’s violent, veiled and subconscious resistance to the framework of the political economy, xenophobia is undoubtedly a desperate and ruthless reaction to socio-economic stresses.

As one former government official informed me, ‘The situation in squatter camps and townships - it is like a tinderbox - anything could set it off. People are desperate.’ But even though xenophobia is clear to see in the ‘event’ of the pogroms - nameless, faceless immigrants, murdered, burnt, beaten and driven out by enraged masses, it also lurks beneath the reality of daily life for the ‘rightless’, penetrating and informing every choice, claim and opportunity.

Take the exploitation of immigrants by landlords. According to sources, most immigrants in Khayelitsha’s ‘Harare’ and Kraaifontein’s Wallacedene are forced to live in trying and dangerous conditions, most often in corrugated iron shacks - roasting in summer, and freezing in winter.
‘The most common form of accommodation in these areas is shacks (wood or tin) that are filthy, crowded and very uncomfortable,’ said Tyanai Masiya, a Zimbabwean civil society activist based in Cape Town. ‘Since most are either unemployed, temporarily employed and underpaid, living in small crowded shacks becomes the only option. These shacks, made up of old and rusty zinc and rotten boards picked up at the dump sites, are the worst kinds of shelter for human beings,’ he said.

Immigrants unable to meet lease requirements - such as legal status, stable employment and funding for deposits - may pay as much as R350-R400 per room monthly for accommodation costing South African citizens R150. Where immigrants cannot finance the cost, they are allowed four to a shack room at R150 - R200 per head.

‘For an average normal room (on a properly constructed and approved house), Zimbabweans are paying between R600 and R1200 per person per room while locals are paying R150-R300 per person per room,’ said the source.

Immigrants were not aware of any legal or other recourse and feel helpless as they are subject to evictions and drastic rent increases without notice. ‘I am trapped,’ said one car guard in South Beach, Durban. ‘There is nobody I can appeal too.’

According to multiple sources, immigrants in the Kraaifontein area have been repeatedly robbed and stabbed, primarily by males between 15 and 35 years old. ‘These people do not give you time to surrender what you have, they just pounce on you and begin to stab you all over. It is up to you to ask for forgiveness and pledge to give them all you have. If they feel that you want to resist they can easily stab you to death even in broad daylight. It’s dangerous out here,’ said one interviewee.

The sources claimed that language, dress code and physical features were used to identify immigrants. ‘When the robbers are not very certain if one is an immigrant, they get one into a dialogue, for example, through just greeting him/her. From the response they can detect if one is an immigrant. Those who are fluent in local languages such as Xhosa sometimes mistakenly get spared,’ he said.

Immigrants were presumed to wear loose clothing, with Zimbabweans perceived as ‘being neat’, and tucking in their shirts. Attacks, I was informed, are often in broad daylight - observed and witnessed by people on the streets and within homes. Lack of intervention, the sources claimed, was chiefly because people feared a) they would be seen as allies of immigrants, b) the attackers would turn on them, c) few wanted to get involved for several other reasons. While interviewees claimed that at least 40 per cent of attacked immigrants had to seek medical attention, and that the perpetrators were known, often operating along the same routes, the police were allegedly reluctant to search for the attackers. According to one interviewee, ‘I suspect that these police get bribes from the robbers. Even if you tell them (the police) that you have seen your attackers somewhere, they will not go there. Yet you have taken a risk to go and report, because some who are seen reporting to the police are attacked again for reporting.’

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* This article was first published in The Africa Report. Field work for this article was made possible by the funding and support of the Centre for Civil Society, based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
* Khadija Sharife is southern Africa correspondent for The Africa Report.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.